Sermon Illustrations

TOZER: SALVATION DEMANDS OBEDIENCE

A. W. Tozer was a man of God who was troubled with the idea that Christian profession does not demand obedience to Christ. He said:

"[Years ago] no one would ever dare to rise in a meeting and say, 'I am a Christian' if he had not surrendered his whole being to God and had taken Jesus Christ as his Lord as well as his Savior and had brought himself under obedience to the will of the Lord. It was only then that he could say, 'I am saved!' Today, we let them say they are saved no matter how imperfect and incomplete the transaction, with the [stipulation] that the deeper Christian life can be tacked on at some time in the future.

"Can it be that we really think that we do not owe Jesus Christ our obedience? We have owed Him our obedience ever since the second we cried out to Him for salvation, and if we do not give Him that obedience, I have reason to wonder if we are really converted! I see things and I hear of things that Christian people are doing, and as I watch them operate within the profession of Christianity, I do raise the question of whether they have been truly converted.

"Brethren, I believe it is the result of faulty teaching to begin with. They thought of the Lord as a hospital and Jesus as the chief of staff to fix up poor sinners that had gotten into trouble! 'Fix me up, Lord,' they have insisted, 'so that I can go my own way!' That is bad teaching, brethren. The person who says, 'Save me, Jesus, but stay out of my life!' is not a Christian."

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